


Back to December

by aceofsparrows



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: (jerry and diana mentioned only), (sorry), Angst, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/M, Gilbert is in love, Post S3, Songfic, anne has doubts (tm), canonical matthew death (sorry), massive spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23222932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofsparrows/pseuds/aceofsparrows
Summary: "Dearest Gilbert,I am writing you because I have found I am too cowardly to say this to your face. It pains me greatly to reject such a gracious proposal, but I cannot in good conscious accept your invitation of marriage..."* * *Anne makes an important decision, Gilbert remains optimistic, and angst is had by all.
Relationships: Diana Barry/Jerry Baynard, Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 5
Kudos: 62





	Back to December

**Author's Note:**

> made the mistake of watching the great gatsby tonight and crying… so have some shirbert angst that’s been sitting in my head for at least a week. 
> 
> songfic feat. taylor swift’s “Back to December”
> 
> massive, MASSIVE spoilers for season 3. read at your own risk.

It’s too pretty outside. The gazebo in the garden is festooned with spring blossoms, flowers bursting from their buds. Once, Anne might have waxed poetic about the romanticism of the setting, about how she had always wanted to be married in the spring with flowers everywhere. Now it seems all those watercolor daydreams have run and bled and smudged into nothing but failure and misshapen hopelessness, and it would be rude to mention a wedding at the moment. 

Especially with Gilbert’s sad eyes so close and so present in front of her own. 

**_I’m so glad you made time to see me_ **

**_How’s life, tell me how’s your family?_ **

**_I haven’t seen them in a while_ **

He looks at his gloves in his lap. “How are things going?” 

Anne bites her lip, answering to the top of his head. “Oh, as well as they always are. Gil, I–” 

“Miss Shirley-Cuthbert,” he sighs, and her breath pauses in her lungs, halfway out and halfway in. He’s never called her Miss Shirley-Cuthbert, not in all the years they’ve known each other. “I think it best we don’t waste our time with idle chit chat, don’t you?” 

Anne swallows. “Lovely day out, isn’t it?” 

**_You’ve been good, busier then ever_ **

**_We small talk, work and the weather_ **

**_Your guard is up and I know why_ **

“Anne.” He looks up at her then, eyes hard, but that handsome jaw quivering. “Say what you need to say and be done with it. I… I need to catch the next ferry to make it back to Toronto in time, so whatever it is you wanted to tell me needs to be done here and now.” 

They stare at each other for one impossibly tense moment that seems to stretch on for eternity before Anne looks down, breaking the shared gaze. 

“Gil, I…” 

**_Because the last time you saw me_ **

**_Is still burned in the back of your mind_ **

**_You gave me roses and I left them there to die_ **

There was snow on the ground. Great heaps of it, so deep that Jerry had had to dig a path to the barn just to feed the animals in the morning. Anne remembers how dark and clear the night sky had been, how Gilbert had come riding up to Green Gables like some fairy-tale prince, her letter tucked in his breast pocket, brow furrowed, a bouquet of roses in his hand. 

She remembers wondering how he had gotten roses in the middle of winter. 

_**So this is me swallowing my pride** _

_**Standing in front of you saying I’m sorry for that night** _

_**And I go back to December all the time** _

The porch had been cold. Her hair, longer and darker and wilder, had come untucked from its hasty nighttime updo. Her feet, bare but for her winter stockings, throbbed from the cold. 

And there was her Prince Charming. 

And she had broken his heart. 

She turned and fled like Cinderella at the ball, not even leaving a glass slipper in her wake. 

**_It turns out freedom ain’t nothing but missing you_ **

**_Wishing I’d realized what I had when you were mine_ **

**_I’d go back to December, turn around and make it all right_ **

**_I go back to December all the time_ **

“I… I miss you dearly, Gil. I know that what I did that night was horrible, and frankly I would applaud you for spitting at me or something as equally foul, because what I did to you was… inexcusable. But I want you to know, once and for all, that I did and I do love you, Gil. And I miss you, dearly, every day. But I just don’t think you should love me.” 

She wants to take his hand, she wants so much to let him know that every word she speaks is truer than anything she’s ever said. But she doesn’t, because she’s supposed to be making this easier, not harder. 

**_These days I haven’t been sleeping_ **

**_Staying up playing back myself leaving_ **

Gilbert was smart. He didn’t write her back, didn’t return to Green Gables for the rest of the winter holiday. Anne packed her things and went back to Queen’s for the spring term with a heavy heart and a troubled mind, and learned to love the silence that came from the lack of letters in his familiar script. 

Her room was quiet that term; Diana, having graduated early and newly married, was honeymooning in Quebec, and with the lack of letters, Anne found that her thoughts were some of her only companions.

And unfortunately, all her thoughts would let her turn over and over again was that night. 

The night she lost the love her life through every fault of her own. 

**_When your birthday passed and I didn’t call_ **

He thought about picking up a pen and writing to her, he really did. 

He even considered going into town and using the post office’s fancy new telephone to call the boarding house so he could have the hope of hearing her voice just once. 

He did neither. 

**_And I think about summer, all the beautiful times_ **

**_I watched you laughing from the passenger side_ **

**_And realized I’d loved you in the fall_ **

One night in April, as the trees are just beginning to blossom and the wind to warm, she dreamt of that night. 

Not the night in December, but another night almost two years earlier, when he’d surprised her at the ruins. She doesn’t remember it all that clearly; there had been poorly-made alcohol involved, and she had been playing at pirates. But she remembers him sitting so close that she could see the firelight reflect in his bottomless hazel eyes when he told her what was keeping him from marrying Winnifred. 

One thing. At the time, she’d thought he’d meant she was holding him back. Then she’d realized he was in love with her, and that she, in fact, was in love with him. 

They’d kissed. They’d cried with relief that they’d found each other at last. They’d written, back and forth and back and forth, almost constantly. 

But it was summer love, and with the turning of the leaves her thoughts turned too. 

**_And then the cold came, the dark days when fear crept into my mind_ **

**_You gave me all your love and all I gave you was goodbye_ **

The next day after the dream she wept bitterly. Every word from that last letter rang clear and awful in her head, but was the worst was that she didn’t regret sending it. As painful as it had been to write those words, she knew they were true. How, in a world full of things as miraculous as foals who could walk right out of the womb and days clear and bright and beautiful and butterflies that sat on your hand and geese who flew south at the same time every year could a boy– a man– as perfect as Gilbert love someone as wretched as her? 

She must be what everyone had always told her she was: a witch. A dirty, filthy, witchy whore who had somehow put poor Gilbert under her spell. How else could he have loved her so long, even when she was so horrid to him over and over again? 

So she wept, but she did not regret what she had written. It had been time to break the spell, to cast her lovely Prince Charming from this gilded tower of courting bliss into the thorny reality below, no matter how much it hurt the both of them. Anne was nothing but horrible orphan trash, and Gilbert deserved so much more. 

Fleetingly, she wondered if Winnifred was still in the market for a husband to live with her in Paris. At least then he’d be sure to have properly beautiful children and a chance to study at the Sorbonne. 

**_So this is me swallowing my pride_ **

**_Standing in front of you saying I’m sorry for that night_ **

**_And I go back to December all the time_ **

“Gil, I… please say something Gil.” 

He doesn’t speak, but he looks at her. She searches his face frantically, hoping, waiting, despairing. His eyes have softened into deep, aching sadness, and that little muscle in his jaw is tight like he’s trying not to cry. 

It’s worse than a thousand knives to her heart, that face. 

_**I** _ **_t turns out freedom ain’t nothing but missing you_ **

**_Wishing I’d realized what I had when you were mine_ **

He wants to kiss her, that’s really what he wants. Even after everything, he wants to take that worried, beautiful face in his hands and kiss her senseless. 

But her words from that cold night echo in the corridors of his mind, and he stays still, trying in vain not to cry. 

**_I’d go back to December turn around and change my own mind_ **

_Dearest Gilbert,_

_I am writing you because I have found I am too cowardly to say this to your face. It pains me greatly to reject such a gracious proposal, but I cannot in good conscious accept your invitation of marriage._

_You see, I feel it is in gross error that we have courted and that you love me so much as to make me your wife. I am not suited to be a wife, nor do I think it would be wise if I were to become one despite that important and lacking detail. Therefore, I find it necessary to decline your proposal and to mandate that we no longer engage with each other in any manner other than that of childhood acquaintances._

_**I go back to December all the time** _

“Anne…” 

“Shhh, Gil, please. Don’t make this worse than it has to be, please. Just, say we’re over and you understand and that’s it, okay?”

“Oh, Anne, you know I can’t do that. I never could.” 

**_I miss your tan skin, your sweet smile, so good to me, so right_ **

**_And how you held me in your arms that September night_ **

**_The first time you ever saw me cry_ **

She remembers getting the news. Jerry, galloping at full speed to Green Gables, his tear-stained face and the crumpled note in his hand saying all too plainly what he could not between the sobs. 

She remembers Gilbert holding her as she wept, and how she thought heavily that they had both lost their fathers now. 

**_Maybe this is wishful thinking_ **

**_Probably mindless dreaming_ **

**_But if we loved again I swear I’d love you right_ **

An apple blossom breaks free of its branch and floats down to land in her lap. They both stare at it, avoiding the others’ gaze. 

After all, what do you say when you destiny is coming crashing down around your ears? 

**_I’d go back in time and change it but I can’t_ **

**_So if the chain is on your door, I understand_ **

“You should go, Gil.” 

“I know.” 

**_But this is me swallowing my pride_ **

**_Standing in front of you saying I’m sorry for that night_ **

**_And I go back to December all the time_ **

“When is your ferry again?” 

“Noon.” 

“It’s quarter-to, Gil.” 

“I know.” 

**_It turns out freedom ain’t nothing but missing you_ **

**_Wishing I’d realized what I had when you were mine_ **

“Do you want me to call you a hansom cab, Gil? I don’t want you to miss your ferry.” 

“No, Anne, just… just stop, please. Give a man a moment to think, would you?” 

“Okay.” 

**_I’d go back to December turn around and change my own mind_ **

“Anne?” 

“Yes.” 

“Close your eyes, would you?” 

She quietly obeys. He stands, smoothing the stray wrinkles in his Sunday best and sighing deeply. 

She feels the feather-light kiss he places on her forehead with every nerve in her body, and when she opens her eyes he’s gone. 

**_I go back to December all the time_ **

There’s a telegram on the receiving table for her the next morning. 

_The proposal still stands, if you ever change your mind._

_I hope you choose to live well, Anne, however that may be, tragical romance and all._


End file.
